12May14

Hundreds of Chinese families seek wartime compensation from Japan

As relations between China and Japan plumb a new low, the descendants of
hundreds of Chinese men forced to work in wartime Japan are taking big,
modern-day Japanese corporates to court. They are seeking millions in
compensation.

Japan invaded China in 1937 and ruled parts of it with a brutal hand for the
next eight years. Chinese historians say nearly 40,000 men were taken to
Japan against their will to work in mines and construction. Survivors say living
conditions were appalling. Many did not make it back to China.

In possibly the biggest class-action suit in Chinese legal history, about 700
plaintiffs lodged a case against two Japanese firms at a courthouse in eastern
Shandong province in April, said Fu Qiang, a lawyer representing the families.
Among the plaintiffs are several forced laborers, now in their 80s and 90s, and
this might be their last chance to seek redress.

The plaintiffs are each seeking 1 million yuan ($160,100) in compensation, a
public apology in several prominent Chinese and Japanese newspapers, as
well as the erection of a memorial and monument in remembrance of the
forced laborers, Fu said, adding that they also want the companies to fund
their legal expenses.

It is unclear whether the lawsuit, with other smaller cases, will be accepted.
But lawyers say there is a good chance they will be heard after a Shanghai
court last month impounded a Japanese ship over a dispute that dates back to
the 1930s war between the two nations.

The lawsuits could further irritate diplomatic relations. Late last month, China
released previously confidential Japanese wartime documents, including some
about comfort women forced to serve in military brothels. The files also contain
details of the Nanjing Massacre, a major source of debate between the
countries.

The number of plaintiffs, including families and surviving forced laborers
seeking redress, total at least 940, with combined claims reaching at least 865
million yuan, lawyers say.

That figure could rise further as there were nearly 8,000 forced laborers from
Shandong during the war, according to Fu.

The other two Japanese companies involved in the suits are coal producer
Nippon Coke and Engineering Industry Co, formerly known as Mitsui Mining
Co, and stainless steel maker Nippon Yakin Kogyo, the lawyers say.

"When we took the laborers to Japan to negotiate a settlement and listened to
their speeches, they moved us to tears," said Deng Jianguo, a lawyer involved
in five of these lawsuits since 2007. "They (the Japanese companies) have the
ability to compensate and make amends for (their) past mistakes, but they
aren't doing it. I think, morally, you can't justify this."

Similar suits would be filed in central Henan and northern Hebei provinces,
Deng said.

Mitsubishi Corp's spokesman Susumu Isogai said in Tokyo: "We can't make
any comment as we have not received the complaint."

Takuya Kitamura, a spokesman for Mitsubishi Materials, and Masayuki
Miyazaki, a spokesman for Nippon Coke, both declined to comment, saying
they both had not received any complaints.

A Nippon Yakin spokesman, who declined to be identified, said the company
is unaware of any new lawsuits against it.

Sensing a Change

Lawyers say they are optimistic the latest cases will be heard as the courts
have asked them to provide more evidence to their claims.

But lawyers say the impounding of the Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd ship is giving
them hope.

The seizure had sparked some initial concerns that Japanese assets in China
might become casualties in legal battles between Japanese corporates and
activists seeking redress. Mitsui later paid about $29 million for the release of
the vessel.

Several international war claims experts said it is important to note the
acceptance by a Beijing court of a smaller suit in February from 40 plaintiffs
demanding compensation for Chinese citizens made by the Japanese to work
as forced laborers for Mitsubishi Materials Corp and Nippon Coke during
World War Two, a first by a Chinese court.

The significance of the court accepting the lawsuit and the seizure of the Mitsui
ship "is not wholly clear at this point, but it does suggest that compensation
might be in the offing", Timothy Webster, the director of East Asian Legal
Studies at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, said in an email.

Previous Suits

The deterioration in relations between China and Japan was a boost to
activists working to win war reparations, said Tong Zeng, a veteran Chinese
activist who has been leading the charge for wartime compensation from
Japan.

Tong, who has also been advising the plaintiffs, said the government had
previously indicated that the families should not sue for fear the legal attacks
would hurt Sino-Japanese relations.

Dozens of wartime compensation suits had been filed in Japan against the
Japanese government and companies associated with the country's wartime
aggression in the first half of the 20th century, including World War Two.
Almost all have been rejected by Japanese courts.

Japan insists that the issue of war reparations was settled by the 1951 San
Francisco Peace Treaty, which formally ended the war, and by later bilateral
treaties. Japan's Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that Chinese individuals have
lost their right to claim war compensation from Japan and its companies under
the 1972 Japan-China joint communiqué.

"I think the lawsuits have the potential to be very significant if the Chinese
courts allow them to go forward," said Julian Ku, a law professor from Hofstra
University in New York, who has written about the forced labor lawsuits in
China.

"They would signal that Chinese courts will not read the 1972 China-Japan
Communiqué and subsequent peace treaty as a settlement of all wartime
claims," he said in emailed comments. "Of course, if the Chinese courts allow
these cases to forward, it would be a serious irritant to China-Japan relations."

The families base their claim on the belief that Beijing did not forfeit the rights
of individual war victims to seek compensation in the agreement signed
between China and Japan in 1972, Tong said.

"German courts, interestingly enough, do not read these treaty waivers as
barring such direct suits", Richard Buxbaum, a retired law professor at the UC
Berkeley School of Law and an expert on international reparations, said in
emailed comments. He added that the courts, however, do bar them on other
grounds such as statutes of limitations and prescriptions against "old" claims.

Japan-China Clashes

The pressure on the firms is particularly intense at this time in China, which is
sore about a row with Japan over a chain of uninhabited islands in the East
China Sea and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit last year to the Yasukuni
Shrine, where war criminals are honored among the country's war dead.

Kang Jian, a lawyer representing the 40 people, said she and her Japanese
counterparts have met with officials from Mitsubishi Materials, but talks with
them have not been successful.

The plaintiffs are seeking 1 million yuan each, but Mitsubishi has made a
"very, very low" counteroffer, said Kang. She declined to disclose the figure as
talks are still going on. Officials from Nippon Coke have refused to meet, she
said.

Liu Guolian, one of the 40 plaintiffs in a Beijing case, said her father Liu Qian
had been tricked by Mitsui Mining into working in mines in Fukuoka, Japan. He
spent over a year there.

Her father, who died in 2010, often went hungry and had to pick on food scraps
by the roadside to survive. His Japanese supervisor even hacked at his leg
with an axe once, she said.

Cui Chunping, who is suing Mitsubishi Materials in Beijing, said his father was
abducted to work in a Mitsubishi mine during the war. "When the foreman
disliked you, he would use a whip to hit you," Cui said.

($1=6.2455 Chinese Yuan)

[Source: By Sui-Lee Wee and Li Hui, Reuters, Beijing, 12May14]

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